


Menoetius

by wreathed



Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Hotel Sex, M/M, Masochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 18:22:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19706923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: The list of things that matter shortens. A late-night release of tension.





	Menoetius

Valery doesn't want anything covetable, not one gram of good, to come out of this man-made hell he has to toil to fix rather than let burn as heaven's equal and opposite reaction; it feels obscene to smile, to laugh, when death and the potential for so much more of it presses so heavily down.

There’s no heaven to counteract, after all. He is a scientist and a Party man.

That’s his reasoning for ignoring what he eventually recognises through the fog of fatigue as an admiration more advanced than was innocuous for Boris Shcherbina. Then there was the manner in which he sometimes catches Boris looking at him, entirely different to the low-level prickling awareness he has of being watched. Irrelevant, in any case, as Valery’s reasoning is also predicated on the impossibility of Boris ever acknowledging it.

Something changes when Boris at last believes and understands Valery’s promise that they were going to die; that they were going to die relatively soon, and nothing such as the seniority of Boris’s position would enable him to do anything about it. The furniture of Party machinations fall away behind his eyes, unrearranged. The list of things that matter shortens.

One night following, Boris insists on a late night walk. Not outdoors, on account of him now being concerned about their exposure after all (even when Valery tells him, hand still gripping his pen as he feels a wave of tiredness rise up and the tenacity of his grip on reality lessen, that it would make no difference); instead, to a windowless room in the hotel’s basement primarily used for storing vodka. Stocks are relatively low, Valery notices. He is bemoaning this, wondering how long it will take them to drink out the hotel, when he lights a fresh cigarette, heart beating in awareness of how much space Boris takes up in this small room.

“Not here, you impossible man,” Boris says roughly, and plucks the cigarette straight out of Valery’s mouth, his fingers against Valery’s lips for so short a time that it was almost as if it didn’t happen. And yet it did.

Valery finds himself standing still and looking up at Boris, who is now putting the cigarette out between his fingers, mouth tightly pressed together from the burn of it. Valery blinks at the imposition, but ultimately he has let it happen.

“Give me the chance,” Boris says, close enough now for Valery to feel all the heat of him. That’s when Boris puts a thumb against Valery’s jaw, patiently lets him wince from the shock of it, then, with an all but boyish look of single-minded determination and supressed terror, brings their mouths together and kisses him.

“The room is clean,” Boris tells him just above the volume of a gasp, his fingers smelling of smoke. Valery feels wild with disbelief and desire. “But I would advise you to stay as quiet as you can manage.”

A warning and a promise. Boris kisses him again, soft and firm, then pushes him back almost to the wall, noise avoided, before he is pressed right against it. As this has not shaken him out of his own head enough, it seems, Boris yanks off his glasses, impudently pocketing them in his own jacket, looking at Valery in the same manner as he does when he wants Valery to provide explanations for events that have never happened before.

Had the situation presented itself (impossible), Valery had thought he would never get his body to the same excited state as his mind, what with the fear and the exhaustion and the spies and the murky horror that surrounds them, but in actuality that and the quiet they have to keep is what cues his body, clueless and typically denied of reasons to desire, as hard from so little attention, gulps of ghostly air the only thing keeping him from risking this indulgent madness being over before it had barely begun.

Boris’s large hand is rubbing at the distention in his trousers and Valery can do nothing but try and stay upright and bite hard down on his own lip.

Something in his mind wonders if this would somehow be more justifiable if Boris was to constrict his throat to bring him closer to death, even just for a moment, or if Boris was to hit the weak hard line of his jaw and cause him pain, or whether this is a covetable good also if it’s something that, deep down, he _wants_. His trousers are unfastened, and Boris’s hot, rough palm is tight around his cock, causing his hips to push forward into the touch as his cock leaks pre-ejaculate in pulses.

“Are you angry? Let me know it,” Valery whispers, like to ask is a kindness rather than a burden, and Boris takes a deep breath (such a sign of life) and smacks one side of his face. It’s loud, and he doesn’t do it again. The skin there stings and it makes him harder. Valery desperately wants to cry out.

“Naive to invite attack,” Boris tells him, then grips his wrists hard against the wall with a painful strength Valery would not have had even as a young man, and he feels it like a fever.

Boris goes to his knees, hands remaining tight around the jut of the pulse in Valery’s wrists, and the warm heat of Boris’s mouth brings him off in moments. He keeps his eyes closed and he hears Boris spit into his handkerchief afterwards as blood rings in his ears.

Death remains at a polite distance. If there’s a next time, he deserves purple bruises on his neck from Boris’s fingers.

“You have the world on your shoulders,” Boris says with his scratchy end-of-day stubble against Valery’s bare neck, the murmur of his mouth meaning the words viscerally seep into Valery’s skin. Boris tenderly runs his strong fingers from Valery’s top shirt button outwards as if he is hoping to find the weight of it there. He looks calmed, satisfied at the accommodating psychological explanation he has created for why Valery might want to be treated like this. Valery doesn't blame Boris for his judgement. He couldn't give a definite answer himself, and he wouldn't want to. And what does a condemned man care about judgement for, anyway.

“We come into this world alone,” says Valery softly, taking one of Boris’s hands and holding it desperately tightly, for a few moment more not letting go.


End file.
